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Debra Higgs Strickland, Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity. By Lindsay Kaplan, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 71, Issue 1, April 2020, Pages 384–386, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flaa034
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This challenging and erudite study is a welcome addition to the growing literature on constructions of racism in premodernity. Although the biological concept of race has been long discredited, that of racism remains viable, if controversial, and the limits of the term’s legitimate usage are still debated. In 2001, arguments for and against the claim that its application to the Middle Ages is anachronistic were collected in a special issue of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (vol. 31), and studies on medieval alterity and race by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Geraldine Heng, and Lisa Lampert, among others, have called attention to other aspects of the debate, as carefully mapped in this new book’s introduction. Lindsay Kaplan’s progressive approach reaches beyond the familiar toolkit of somatic and religious difference to examine the seminal role of theological discourses in the construction of notions of essentialized inferiority used to rationalize the oppression and exploitation of targeted groups. Her stated goal is not to argue ‘for an origin or invention of racism in medieval Europe, but for a particular articulation of it that powerfully influences the subsequent history of race’ (pp. 14–15). This is an important caveat which implicitly acknowledges the work of David Goldenberg, Benjamin Isaac, and other scholars who have argued for racist or proto-racist constructions in other cultures and during earlier historical periods.
